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How sure can you be that the font you specify will be present on the end user's machine? This is the latest snapshot of the of the Code Style Unix font survey and should give you greater confidence in selecting a font.
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The most common font reported on Linux systems is the cursive font URW Chancery L at 97% frequency, followed by geometric sans serif URW Gothic L and serif font Century Schoolbook L. The serif font URW Bookman L and monospace font Nimbus Mono L complete the 5 most common Linux fonts at 95% frequency.
Linux fonts are not commonly regarded as Web safe and tend to be overlooked in standard font stacks. However, the 11 most common Linux fonts are available on 90% of distributions, far more common than typical Microsoft and Mac fallback font families.
| Font name | Installed (%) | Sample | Image | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| URW Chancery L | 96.57% |
|
Sample | Image |
| URW Gothic L | 96.26% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Century Schoolbook L | 95.95% |
|
Sample | Image |
| URW Bookman L | 95.64% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Nimbus Mono L | 95.33% |
|
Sample | Image |
| URW Palladio L | 94.39% |
|
Sample | Image |
| DejaVu Sans Mono | 93.81% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Nimbus Sans L | 93.22% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Nimbus Roman No9 L | 90.97% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Bitstream Charter | 90.71% |
|
Sample | Image |
| DejaVu Sans | 90.68% |
|
Sample | Image |
| DejaVu Sans Light | 88.41% |
|
Sample | |
| DejaVu Serif | 85.59% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Courier 10 Pitch | 84.06% |
|
Sample | |
| Bitstream Vera Sans Mono | 83.49% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Bitstream Vera Sans | 82.24% |
|
Sample | Image |
| DejaVu Sans Condensed | 80.97% |
|
Sample | |
| DejaVu Serif Condensed | 80.53% |
|
Sample | |
| Lucida Bright | 77.87% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Lucida Sans | 77.87% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Lucida Sans Typewriter | 77.87% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Bitstream Vera Serif | 74.45% |
|
Sample | Image |
| FreeMono | 73.31% |
|
Sample | Image |
| FreeSerif | 73.31% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Liberation Mono | 73.01% |
|
Sample | |
| Liberation Serif | 73.01% |
|
Sample | |
| FreeSans | 72.46% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Liberation Sans | 72.12% |
|
Sample | |
| Arial | 67.29% |
|
Sample | Image |
| Courier New | 66.36% |
|
Sample | |
| Times New Roman | 63.86% |
|
Sample | |
| Verdana | 61.99% |
|
Sample | |
| Arial Black | 61.37% |
|
Sample | |
| Georgia | 60.75% |
|
Sample | |
| Trebuchet MS | 60.44% |
|
Sample | |
| Comic Sans MS | 59.81% |
|
Sample | |
| Impact | 59.81% |
|
Sample | |
| Electron | 59.42% |
|
Sample | |
| Metal | 59.42% |
|
Sample | |
| Nice | 59.42% |
|
Sample | |
These are only the top forty fonts, see the full Linux and Unix font survey results (about 100 KB) for a complete listing.
These figures are the cumulative total of font survey submissions since January 2007. Older submissions are archived to maintain a 3 year rolling sample. The table shows the average submission rate and totals for each operating system, and the the date the applet-based survey was introduced.
| Survey | Windows | Mac | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Submissions per week | 11 | 2 | 2 |
| Total submissions | 2050 | 355 | 321 |
| Survey applet from | 21 April 2007 | 12 May 2007 | 21 February 2009 |
| Fonts surveyed | 281 | 117 | 102 |
Our main interest is to build reliable font stacks for screen rendering, but CSS allows us to specify a different font stack to print Web pages. The most reliable way to apply print media style sheets is to use the media attribute on the style sheet link element. The selectors you choose and font-family declarations you add to this style sheet will only apply when the page is printed.
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles/print.css" media="print" />
What font combinations would you choose for print? Use the font stack builder to create a print font stack and submit your ideas.
